Terenzuola Vignebasse Vermentino

The Giuliani family arrived in New York City in the late 1800s as emigrants from a difficult corner of Emilia Romagna. In the United States, they prospered until the great depression of 1929, when they decided to return to Italy. With their savings, they purchased a small three hectare farm in the northern part of Tuscany and in the southern part of Liguria, between the Apennine Mountains and the sea of Liguria. The area is known as the Lunigiana – after the city of Luni, an ancient Roman colony of the second century b.c. Today, Ivan Giuliani is at the helm of the estate. As a young man, starting in 1993, he helped his uncle to bottle their harvest and sold the wine to local restaurants. But in 1995, he was called away from home to complete his mandatory military service. Entirely by coincidence, he was stationed in Friuli and Slovenia—“a borderland” not unlike his native Lunigiana. There he learned to make better wine alongside local vignerons and gained an appreciation for the idea of living off the land, as well as respecting it. Vignebasse opens with heady aroma of citrus, wild herb and a whiff of tropical fruit. Medium-bodied but light on its feet, the tangy palate offers ripe peach, pineapple and Myer lemon before closing on a saline note.